"When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President. Now I'm beginning to believe it."
~ Clarence Darrow
Image of the day:
BODY
~ 4 Directions to a Kick-Ass Back -- "The Fortress believes there are four fundamental directions a weight must be pulled or lifted in order to build a kick-ass back. He calls it his Directional Back Training Principle and it has nothing to do with North and South."
~ Information Overload? -- "We've reached a point where a lack of information is not the problem - it's a lack of filtering that information. You have to almost practice selective ignorance. At this point there is so much information available – that you need to filter out at least as much as you take on board."
~ Busted! The 20 Worst Foods in America -- "Restaurants don't want you to know the truth. So we picked through the glop to identify the meals you should never order."
~ Small Lifestyle Changes Combat Obesity in Children and their Families -- "Pediatricians at the University of Colorado at Denver have shown that very small changes in lifestyle can help stem the epidemic of obesity in North American children."
~ Talking Turkey: MayoClinic.com Highlights Healthy Holiday Cooking -- "Thanksgiving is a time to be thankful for family, friends, good health and great food. This year, instead of serving the old, not-so-healthy standbys -- turkey smothered in gravy, candied yams, buttered corn and pumpkin pie -- try healthier Thanksgiving recipes from MayoClinic.com."
~ Managing Diabetes With Exercise -- "Are you doing what it takes to handle or prevent diabetes?"
~ Vitamin D may curb type 2 diabetes risk -- "During a 17-year follow-up of roughly 4,000 men and women, researchers found that individuals with higher blood levels of vitamin D had a 40 percent lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes than those with lower levels of this vitamin." There's no clear cause and effect here, but Vitamin D is starting to look ever more crucial to health.
~ Eating for Stress Reduction -- "Women’s Health Magazine has a new article on foods that help to reduce stress. I was very excited to read their article on this topic because so many people are suffering from stress and reach to food for comfort - especially during the holidays." These are much healthier than the usual choices of chocolate, baked goods, or ice cream.
PSYCHE/SELF
~ Does Depression Shrink Your Brain? -- "A new brain imaging method could help provide answers to this phenomenon."
~ Philosophical Counseling Dictionary - A Glossary for Counselors & Practitioners -- A handy little list of terms taken from dictionary.com.
~ Practicing Zen Meditation In Psychotherapists. Controlled Study Suggest It Matters -- "All therapists direct their attention in some manner during psychotherapy. A special form of directing attention, 'mindfulness', is recommended."
~ Slumber Reruns: As We Sleep, Our Brains Rehash Events of the Day -- "Your brain doesn't take a rest when you do. While you slept last night, regions of your brain may well have been going over the events of the previous day in a process that could be related to consolidating memories, a team of researchers at the University of Arizona (U.A.) in Tucson says. In fact, the review may be taking place at several times the speed, by which the experiences took place when you were alert."
~ The growth cone -- "The remarkable specificity of neuronal connectivity depends on accurate axon pathfinding during development. Pathfinding involves the detection of guidance cues in the environment by the growth cone, a motile chemotactic structure at the leading tip of the extending axon."
~ 7 Sure-Fire Ways to Develop Persistence -- "Persistence is essential. In fact, persistence is one of the most important characteristics successful people share in common. There is no other way to succeed but by developing persistence in our life, and here I’d like to share seven ways to develop it."
~ One Choice Too Many -- "American life is flooded with too many choices."
~ Becoming Self-Taught -- "[I]f you stop to think about it, much of what you know how to do you’ve picked up on your own. But we rarely think about the process of becoming self-taught. This is too bad, because often we shy away from things we don’t know how to do without stopping to think about how we might learn it — in many cases, fairly easily.
~ Don’t let your “hot buttons” spoil your chances -- "Everyone has “hot buttons.” They’re your tender spots, the places where you’re most sensitive, the points where you get irritated, or hurt, or angry, and have to respond. The trick to preventing them from messing up your day is awareness: The more aware you are of what rattles the bars of your cage, the more you’ll be able to catch yourself before you do any damage." It's all about mindfulness.
CULTURE/POLITICS
~ 10 Ways YOU Can Fight Fascism Around the World -- "Let’s begin by shaking off bad language—we tend to discuss politics using old metaphors, which are useless today and actually make understanding the problem more difficult. There is no Left and Right, there is no “inside the system” because none of us are “outside” of it, there is no change “from the bottom up” because there is no “top” to bring the change to."
~ Art and Elitism: A Form of Pattern Recognition -- "So the question is, to what extent are we truly judging the merit of the work of art, and to what extent are we just using our pattern-recognition skills"
~ Deepak Chopra: "I'm Rich. I Have a Gun. Please Be My Friend." -- "Recently the term "smart power" has been surfacing more and more in discussions of America's role in the world. The basic idea is that "hard power" and "soft power" need to be balanced in an intelligent way when dealing with other countries. Hard power means military and economic strength. Soft power means exerting influence through diplomacy, making friends for America and its way of life. At present, most observers would say that we are far from exerting smart power."
~ War on Iraq: Four Years Later, Many Iraqis Still Lack Reliable Water, Electricity -- "Most of Northern Iraq without electricity; 7 out of 10 Iraqis now lack steady supply of clean water."
~ Snapshot of America -- "Nine TIME photographers fan out across America to capture a typical day in our lives."
~ GOP Strategists Worry About Clinton Strength -- "Carefully keeping track of Hillary Clinton's campaign from day to day, senior Republican strategists and White House officials are increasingly concerned that she will be a very formidable candidate in next year's presidential election."
~ Court Clears Musharraf's Rule -- "A Supreme Court hand-picked by President Gen. Pervez Musharraf swiftly dismissed legal challenges to his continued rule on Monday, opening the way for him to serve another five-year term - this time solely as a civilian president." Democracy my ass.
HABITATS/TECHNOLOGY
~ Bangladesh Cyclone Death Toll Tops 3,100 -- "Officials say death toll could reach 10,000. Reaching survivors is difficult."
~ Emissions Growth Must End in 7 Years, UN Warns -- "The world will have to end its growth of carbon emissions within seven years and become mostly free of carbon-emitting technologies in about four decades to avoid killing as many as a quarter of the planet's species from global warming...."
~ Amazon Sells Own Gadget to Boost E-Books -- "Amazon.com Inc. is hoping to invigorate a nascent market for electronic books by introducing its own e-book reader with free wireless connectivity."
~ Evolutionary Biology Research On Plant Shows Significance Of Maternal Effects -- "Plants grown in the same setting as their maternal plant performed almost 3.5 times better than those raised in a different environment -- indicating that maternal plants give cues to their offspring that help them adapt to their environmental conditions."
~ Noah's flood may have pushed Euro-farming -- "The flood thought to be behind the biblical tale of Noah and his ark may have jump-started European agriculture, a British-Australian study showed."
~ Magnetic nanoparticles detect and remove harmful bacteria -- "Researchers in Ohio report the development of magnetic nanoparticles that show promise for quickly detecting and eliminating E. coli, anthrax, and other harmful bacteria. In laboratory studies, the nanoparticles helped detect a strain of E. coli within five minutes and removed 88 percent of the target bacteria, the scientists say."
~ 'Time-sharing' Tropical Birds Key To Evolutionary Mystery -- "Whereas most birds are sole proprietors of their nests, some tropical species "time share" together -- a discovery that helps clear up a 150-year-old evolutionary mystery, says a biology professor."
INTEGRAL/BUDDHIST BLOGS
~ NEW INTEGRAL BLOG -- Integral News and Views -- "An integral view holds that everyone has part of the truth, but some perspectives are deeper or more complete than others - and ultimately all aspects of our experience and our world fit together in a way that makes sense. This group blog aims to explore accessible and practical integral perspectives for people who are interested in getting beyond fragmented worldviews, who desire intimacy with all that they are, and who wish to help the world, themselves, and others evolve and thrive in a mutually beneficial and sustainable manner. We invite you to send in material for possible inclusion in the blog, and if you have any questions or suggestions, please contact us. If you wish to make a donation to this project it would be gratefully appreciated."
~ Mindfulness and AD/HD -- "An interesting story about the UCLA Mindful Awareness Research Center (MARC) and their work on Mindfulness and AD/HD. The gist of the story is the use of Mindfulness practice as a way to help those with AD/HD enhance their ability to pay attention and monitor their emotional states. Key to the medical understanding is the need to practice throughout your everyday life."
~ The New Economy of Nature -- "At the end of the twentieth century, more than three million people were dying every year of diseases spread by water, and another one billion were at risk, lacking access to water suitable to drink. The problem isn't limited to developing countries."
~ Forging a more spiritual path -- "Richard John is the former executive director of the Shambhala Centre in Halifax, now one of 30 special teachers called acharyas, whose work is to teach Buddhism and meditation practice and the Shambhala Path wherever they can."
~ An engrossing exploration of mind and happiness -- "The Fifth Global Conference on Buddhism (GCB5) gathers some of the world’s foremost meditation practitioners and Dharma teachers to share experiences in transforming the mind to achieve happiness."
~ The Radical Spirituality of Generation X, Part 18: From Hollywood to the Holy Woods -- "Now, I live on the holy banks of Mother Ganges, in Rishikesh, India. I sit each evening as the sun's last rays dance off Her waters, a child’s soft, dirty arms wrapped around my neck, dozens of others vying for my hand, finger, or a place on my lap."
~ Metamorphosis of Narcissus & The Omega Point -- "The evolving crises pose enormous downside risks, but what are the upside possibilities which might emerge out of these crises? It is in times of war or crises of survival that humans find themselves able to rise above personal preoccupations and egocentric thinking and to consider the ways in which humankind as a whole might rise above crises in common purpose and common effort."
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